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Cake day: June 22nd, 2023

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  • turmacar@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzWe lost Keanu
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    1 month ago

    Star Trek is attention grabbing. It doesn’t mean we should depend on time travel to save the whales. Not being able to separate fantasy from reality is not a scientific viewpoint. Actual education about any of this would be steering away from it, not into it.

    The answer to all questions about advanced ancient civilizations existing is “probably not”. There are interesting examples that push back the earliest evidence of some things, like the Antikythera mechanism, but the only thing that is evidence of is that gears are older than previously thought. “Could there have been an ancient globe spanning civilization that only used wood or was on Antarctica or for some other reason has surviving no evidence?” is the same level of question as “Could there be a Discworld?”. The infeasibility of proving a negative is not the same as “yes this existed”.

    Ancient Aliens level speculation on ancient civilizations is religion without a sacred text, inventing fantasies of a utopian past out of whole cloth because of an imagined fragment of a thread.


  • turmacar@lemmy.worldtoScience Memes@mander.xyzWe lost Keanu
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    1 month ago

    “What if every star was a human soul?” is not an interesting astronomy question to get people into astronomy. “Big Astronomy” not awarding grants to study that, is not a conspiracy. It’s due diligence.

    Using a platform to say “What if [random speculation that has no basis and can’t be tested]” is not useful science outreach. It’s someone pretending to be science-y.

    A person’s sole redeeming aspect being “being an engaging speaker” doesn’t make them a useful object lesson, it makes them yet another snake oil salesman. That’s not new or unique. That’s being a charlatan. Which is what people don’t like about Graham.